I shudder and try not to stare, clutching my laptop to my pounding chest. They grimace and groan in reply, slurping and grunting and lubricating their lolling tongues with the brightly colored contents of plastic tubs, tubes and squeeze-bottles. This horrendous, quivering blob of teeth and meat is the dark effluence of that oxymoronic assault on the ramparts of reason: the New South. While milky Merkin overlords swoosh along immaculate freeways to their assembly technician and assistant purchasing manager jobs at the gleaming DaimlerChrysler plant, this turgid sludge of failed humanity grunts against the grindstone beneath the floor, toiling and staggering and sloshing noxious fluids into the tubes and fittings of the unseen machine, scurrying just before the light of the clean Merkin dawn to dank and putrid lairs I can barely imagine, where scratchy AM radio serenades tattered, grease-stained Confederate flags with a cross-talk patchwork of bible-and-brimstone ramblings and the Muzak version of "40 Hour Week." Rise again? No, in the name of reason and light, no!